ABSTRACT

Perhaps ‘the largest and most powerful Bolshevik opposition in the history of Soviet Russia’ (Cohen 1980:63), the Left Communist movement of 1918 is equally important for the legacy that it bequeathed. The questions which the Left Communists raised regarding the growth of bureaucratic authoritarianism within Soviet Russia were at the root of the critiques put forward by later opposition factions, the Democratic Centralists and the Workers’ Opposition. Accordingly, they will repay detailed examination.